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Calling him names and trashing him isn't honest...he isn't 'anti-gay'...he accepts them just fine.

Actually, he's just not as bad as some bigots. He argued in favor of keeping homosexuality illegal, until that was overturned. (Became "moot"?) Then he backtracked, and now says, essentially, that he's not in favor of re-criminalizing it. But 'not wanting to make something illegal' is rather short of 'accepting' something.

As to "homosexuals want to change the definition of the institution" - there are a lot of definitions of the 'institution'. For example, Catholics don't accept that marriage can be divided. Divorce is not possible in the Catholic church. But they don't argue that divorce be made illegal - they don't argue that non-Catholics can't get divorced.

And there's the key distinction - between religious concepts of marriage and the actual legal arrangements. There's already a significant different between legal marriage in the U.S. and the Catholic definition of marriage. Couples that are legally divorced are still considered married in the eyes of the Church.

What 'homosexuals' - and, demonstrably, a fair number of straights and others - want to change is the legal framework of marriage. Mormons like Card are free to have lots of additional restrictions about marriage - must be between a man and a woman, they have to wear special undergaments during the ceremony, whatever, I don't know or care - for the members of their church. But they don't get to force everyone else to marry like their religion says.

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society. . " http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html

Mr. Card seems to be under the impression that so long as he doesn't advocate stoning homosexuals to death in the town square, he cannot be a bigot.
He is wrong.

Orson Scott Card on how homophobic Orson Scott Card is:

The hypocrites of homosexuality are, of course, already preparing to answer these statements by accusing me of homophobia, gay-bashing, bigotry, intolerance; but nothing that I have said here -- and nothing that has been said by any of the prophets or any of the Church leaders who have dealt with this issue -- can be construed as advocating, encouraging, or even allowing harsh personal treatment of individuals who are unable to resist the temptation to have sexual relations with persons of the same sex. On the contrary, the teachings of the Lord are clear in regard to the way we must deal with sinners. Christ treated them with compassion -- as long as they confessed that their sin was a sin. Only when they attempted to pretend that their sin was righteousness did he harshly name them for what they were: fools, hypocrites, sinners.

Oh, so that clears that up, then. He's not.

Likewise, if there was a law that prohibited prayer in anyplace outside of a religious institution, I could say I was not an anti-religious zealot because I only supported the enforcement in flagrant cases, for instance, where a family was praying in public in a distracting manner, or where someone was having a party and playing Fireflight too loud. Then we could bring them to court and prosecute them for playing. You see, I don't hate the people who choose to worship false idols and fails to follow the bible(Matthew 6:5), I simply want an ordered society where we follow the rule of law. That I get to harass people who annoy me, even when they are in the privacy of their own home, is just frosting on the cake.

Just because one hates a little less than one peers does not give the person a right to deny their bigotry. Is a person who only burns down empty churches and synagogues any less of a bigot than someone who shoot the members? I would think not. Just because one is a little less hateful and therefore is ridiculed by one's peers, does that give free reign to other denegate the annoying people? I don't think so.

I believe that Card thinks he is not a homophobe just like rush thinks he did nothing wrong on his little trip to the DR or Santorum thinks that he believes he has respect for the ability of woman to think for herself. And all these people are probably a little less crazy than some of the other people in their peer group, and for that we can be thankful. That there are some insane people who are not so insane as to actually want to do harm to the people they hate, unless, or course, they don't know their place. People who are just keeping the lesser folks in their place and enforcing the norms of society, then, are to thanks, not called out for who they are.

Which is to say that I know where Card is coming from, and by the measure of the religious right that wishes to convert anyone they do not agree with I am sure he is a flaming liberal that love to bend over for Obama, but in the world where love and tolerance and acceptance prevail, only a homophobe could write something like that. The rest of us believe that we adults should be able to have consensual sex in our homes and show affection for who we please outdoors. After all, I don't see police harassing straight couples leaving the theatre.

In response to Card criticizing Rowling:
http://www.linearpublishing.com/RhinoStory.html

Card said in this article criticizing Rowling's originality:
"The difference between us is that I actually make enough money from Ender's Game to be content, without having to try to punish other people whose creativity might have been inspired by something I wrote."

Might I remind readers of Card's fundamental flaw in basic logic: the above cannot possibly be true, Card having written the essay with at least some form of castigation in mind for Rowling! This also reveals Card is not near the contentedness as he claims.

Is this not hypocrisy at it's most blatant and clear?

*****a great article on Card's breed of dogma is:"My favorite author, my worst interview" :
http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card/index.html

Is being hate-filled a sure sign of low intelligence?
Does Card have a history of being hate-filled person? Here are some indicators. (How can his new jealousy of Rowling be any sort of surprise?):
http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/01/03/orson-scott-card-criminalize-homosexual-behavior.htm
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-05-15-1.html
http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html

Literary criticism of Card by respected and award-winning author John Kessel:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Demonizing.html
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

Card as could-be Hitler-apologist in 'Ender's Game':
Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman (20 Years Later) - Elaine Radford's analysis of the Ender and Hitler connection:
http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html

possibility that Card's Ender's Game itself was stolen from the 1984 film the Last Starfighter :
from digg.com, comment by Dysarthria on 06/16/2007:
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Orson_Scott_Card_Reveals_Plans_for_Video_Games_based_on_Ender_s_Game
"A few points:

1) The movie of Ender's Game (published in 1985) has already been done, it's called the Last Starfighter (1984). While not identical, both are about boys who save the planet by playing a video game. When I read this novel about 20 years ago, I felt like it was it was kind of a rip-off. Great story, just not that original.

2) I think the most boring game in the world would be an adaptation of a novel about a video game. Guys, come on. Enders game was a nice little unoriginal story published 20 years ago."

Also, remember this man criticizes Darwinismin.
The following link to another of Card's essays is from digg.com's insomniacal on 06/16/2007 :
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-01-08-1.html

And he also tells people in his books when a character is gay!

If you read any OSC books you should assume there will be gay characters -- oh and man-boy love. Which is quite interesting that he includes so much gay sex in his novels when he personally thinks homosexuality is a sin and should be criminalized

Card is EXTREMELY homophobic and has very strong religious and personal views against gay people but when he writes novels, nearly all of his main characters have a very intimate (personal / not necessarily physical) homosexual experience. I'd say he's got some serious Freudian repression going on or something like that.

...don't have the teachers tell all the kids that homosexuality is all right and just an alternative lifestyle. If they are allowed to do that, they it's not the religiously-neutral public school we should have.

Teaching the fact that homosexuality exists and is observed in essentially all mammals is not the same thing as teaching that it's "all right". On the other hand, should schools be involved in teaching morals at all? If so, which ones? If not, what do you do about, say, bullying?

On another note, is there any justification besides a religious one that says homosexuality is anything but "all right"? That's where Orson Scott Card lost me with his little treatise about homosexuality - where he says 'Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books'. The whole article has basically been saying that he considers homosexuality bad because his church says so, and if you don't want to follow the church, leave it. So far, I have no problem with that. But then he wants his church's standards to apply even to people not in his church. Um, nope. Not just because the church says so, anyway. If they can offer some kind of evidence that such laws would be a good idea, maybe.

I'm not aware of any solid evidence that homosexuality per se is bad. About the only thing I can think of is the somewhat higher transmissibility of STDs given typical male-male sexual practices - but the opposite is true of lesbian activities in general.

Same thing for evolution : if it's taught, I don't have a problem with that as long as the present evidence against it as well as in favor of it.

"[E]vidence against it"? Such as?

This story is basically a retelling of Jesus Christ. I loved it as a kid but as I got older and read more of C.S. Lewis, I became less and less impressed with him. I've read his books on Christianity and how he turned to Christianity after many hardships in his life. I'm a man of science myself and have thus forgotten about these books as I could never come to terms with them.

After reading some of Orson Scott Card's infamous rantings, I have also fallen out of admiring him.

Is anyone else having these problems with these once great authors? Maybe I shouldn't care about their political viewpoints when I read their fiction?

Hmmm... of the list, I've read 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, probably 7 (a long time ago), maybe 9, some of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, some of 15 (thought MiaHM was better and gave up halfway through), 17, 18, and probably 20.
Of your list, I've read 3, 4, 5, maybe 6?, 8, 9, 10, and maybe 11.
I tend to lose track of what I read when I was a teenager (too long ago), so my memories of the older books aren't as reliable as those of, say, Neal Stephenson.

That said, I find that a lot of the books on this list don't succeed as novels so much as illustrations of a particular concept that the author wanted to write about. Also, reading stuff like this has permanently put me off Orson Scott Card.

Here you go: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html " Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society. The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships. "

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

Dunno what grandparent was talking about, but my understanding is that he wrote the novel version of Ender's Game only because he wanted to set up the character for Speaker For The Dead. Dunno if that means he's unhappy that people liked Ender's Game so much.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Orson Scott Card is a worthless asshole:

Within the Church, the young person who experiments with homosexual behavior should be counseled with, not excommunicated. But as the adolescent moves into adulthood and continues to engage in sinful practices far beyond the level of experimentation, then the consequences within the Church must grow more severe and more long-lasting; unfortunately, they may also be more public as well.

This applies also to the polity, the citizens at large. Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

First off: I'm wrong. He cited Buffy, which had a much more obvious bi (gay? hard to tell for sure) character in a main role, so that wasn't likely his motivation in not mentioning B5. Still, your comments deserve a response.

"The only thing I can think you're referring to is Talia and Ivanova, and that certainly wasn't prominent. To tell the truth it was only hinted at"

You and I must have watched different shows. They slept together (we see Ivanova getting out of Talia's bed), and Talia's rant when she turns is quite specific about sleeping with Ivanova and telling her that she pretended to care for her.

You might consider this "hinting", but to get a sense of Card's reaction, read his rather long essay on the topic of homosexuality. He says, "laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books [...] to be used when necessary to send a clear message [...that open homosexuals...] cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

Not exactly someone who is going to say, "well, they're sleeping together, but they might just be friends," IMHO.

Now, I despise Card. He may be a great writer of Science Fiction, but his bigoted attitudes makes it impossible for this SF lover to read his works anymore.

As much as I like his books (at least ones that are not trying to turn me into a drooling mormon) he is a dispicable human and an outrageous bigot:
See
http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card /index.html
and his actual views
http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html
Those articles will turn you off on that guy.. or at least stop purchasing his books.

(this was originally buried in another thread, but reposting here as OSC is really not a nice guy, so does not surprise me that he would turn on a large segment of his fans.)

As much as I like his books (at least ones that are not trying to turn me into a drooling mormon) he is a dispicable human and an outrageous bigot:
See
http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card /index.html
and his actual views
http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html

Those articles will turn you off on that guy.. or at least stop purchasing his books.

I've always felt like Card is an outsider to the science fiction world. Nowhere was this more clear than reading the introduction to his collection of short stories Flux - he relates his entry into the community and his writing for a Mormon audience lucidly, and it reveals a lot about his attraction to the genre.

Some people seem to me like they're just living in a different world from everyone else. This isn't a good or a bad thing; they're very remarkable people, but they just don't share the same existence as the rest of us. A loose friend (whom I haven't seen in years) is a bit of a pyromaniac, a megalomaniac with moderately serious plans of world domination, and a significantly above-average intelligence. I don't actually expect him to conquer the world, but he sees it in a way that most other people don't. It's hard to express but easy to see.

Card is one of these people, too; reading his work, I can feel the alien nature of his message, his plots, and his characterization. It's very much the intangible sense you get from a zealot - the absolute dedication to a worldview which is almost, but not quite, completely unlike your own. In many cases, this adds a great deal to his fiction, but it's also uncomfortable to realize just how distant his strict Mormon perspective is.

I can't find the link (or the title) now, but Card's approach to the science fiction field reminds me in some subtle way of a sf story about a brilliant molecular geneticist who engineered a virus that would promote his religion's idea of chastity but didn't have quite enoug foresight to predict all its effects. (Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It's fairly well-known.)

All qualitative things aside, Card's open assertions (cf. that 1990 article, or the one you linked) that the government should legislate against homosexual people are downright scary. I'm glad that he's a writer and not a politician. (But there are plenty of politicians in Utah, and who knows how much influence there is in Card's stories - especially the ones he produces and performs only for Mormon audiences?)

(It's amusing that although Card hates what gay people do, according to the introduction to Flux, his first calling was as a playwright.)

Read The Hypocrites of Homosexuality. Post back if you have any questions.

Excerpts for the lazy:

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message to those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

The Hypocrites Of Homosexuality"

Wow.

http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1 .html

Sorry, but bullshit. He believes homosexuals are people full of evil who are going to Hell and must be changed by good Mormons. It doesn't matter what fictional bullshit he writes about them.

Some folks on here have suggested some of Orson Scott Card's fiction. I would also like to suggest some read his non-fiction. He is an outspoken critic of homosexuality and gay marriage. I read those works by Orson Scott Card and they were enough to convince me that I didn't want to read any of his fiction. Your mileage may vary, but it doesn't hurt to be an informed consumer.

Thank you for pointing this out. I had no idea.

Before you pay any more money to Card, read his Hypocrites of Homosexuality .

He's homophobic

How so?

Just in case this gets modded as a troll, it is true. If you enjoy Orson Scott Card's books, do yourself a favor and never read his essays. But if you really want to: here's one.

Actually, I wouldn't say that the Japanese grew complacent. It is commonly believed that the Alaskan Eskimos came from Japan and the Kennewick man, as someone mentioned earlier, might have too.. here

Yes, the LDS Church teachs that homosexuality is a sin. So do the Baptists. So do the Catholics.

Unfortunately for your argument (which is sound, and true) it is reasonably common knowledge that Card has a big problem with homosexuality... you can read about it in just about any of the articles he's written over time.

Here's one:

The Hypocrites of Homosexuality - By Orson Scott Card

It doesn't take a nuclear physicist (or even a Linux Enthusiast :D) to read the blatent and hidden undertones in the above article. Given this new knowledge, do you think that it is at all possible -- consciously or unconsciously -- that Card did just such a thing (purposely make references between homosexuality and evil) as the original poster suggests?


-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)

I always find it interesting that Card is bashed by both sides of issues. The gay-rights groups hate him because of his moral stance he has taken against homosexual behavior. (See this article ) And then you get comments like these who think there is to much homosexuality in his books.
There are those who complain that his books are too "preachy" and also there are those (mostly "orthodox" Mormons) who complain that his books should bear a stronger witness of his faith. My guess is that the "anonymous coward" who placed this post is looking a little too hard for homosexual references. He can probably find them in the phonebook if he looks hard enough!